The Weight of Their Vote

The Weight of Their Vote

Lori Gates-Schuyler is chief of staff to President Ed Ayers at the University of Virginia. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2001 where she concentrated on United States Southern and Womenâ€™s History. Schuyler has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Susie Pryor Award (1994) from the Arkansas Women's History Institute for her work on the Women's Emergency Committee and the Little Rock School Crisis.

Author and historian Lori Gates-Schuyler discusses her book, “The Weight of Their Vote: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s,” which reexamines the impact and significance of the 19th Amendment. In a public address at the Clinton School, Gates-Schuyler talks about the impact of women’s suffrage had in states across the South. She shows that from polling places to the halls of state legislatures, women altered the political landscape in ways both symbolic and substantive. Schuyler challenges popular scholarly opinion that women failed to wield their ballots effectively in the 1920s, arguing instead that in state and local politics, women made the most of their votes.